To my knowledge I've never seen such things, or been where they are located. (Sometimes I joke that Galion is a risky place to live, because we're only a few miles down the road from North Robinson, which is one of the four top targets for terrorists who want to strike a blow to the US. They'd hit New York, New York; Los Angeles, California; Washington D.C.; and North Robinson, Ohio. This is exactly the kind of joke you think it is.)

However, if I *did* see surveillance cameras around here, I'd just continue to go about my business as usual, because I'd be pretty sure nothing I was planning on doing is the sort of thing they're looking for, anyway. Do I care if the government knows that I went to work, or took my paycheck to the bank, or picked up some meat and cheese from the deli? They are welcome to this knowledge. In fact, if they asked, I'd wear a wire and narrate my daily activities for them minute-by-minute. I'd relish the prospect of some poor sap having to figure out how to summarize it for his superiors without sounding like a smart alec and also being boring at the same time.

"Thursday, December 6th. Suspect went to work, where he manned the circulation desk for most of his shift to cover for a co-worker who was on vacation, then he put some photos from their recent Christmas Open House up on the employer's website. After work he went home, ate lunch, read from a book, cooked supper, read from a book some more, and went to sleep, all of which fits the suspect's established pattern for Thursdays." Some day I want to meet the operative who has to read those reports, so I can find out whether he's managed to stay sane despite the tedium.

However, if I *did* see surveillance cameras around here, I'd just continue to go about my business as usual, because I'd be pretty sure nothing I was planning on doing is the sort of thing they're looking for, anyway

Depends on your goals and values. Sure, a third party candidate is vanishingly unlikely to win, on the other hand your vote may help their party cross the tipping point to qualify for federal campaign funds in the next election and perhaps get the media attention necessary to start making a real difference - after all they don't even have to field a candidate with a realistic chance of winning to start affecting policy, they just need to attract enough of the vote that the major parties worry about losing crucial support and try to change their policy to appeal to the "renegade" voters.

And if you don't perceive either major candidate as being significantly less bad than the other then your vote is wasted by voting for either, whereas working toward adding a new voice to the debate might actually be worthwhile.

Comparing that with the sheer amount of minor traffic and littering violations that occur in almost every larger city in the world, I don't think those measures are bad. At all.Here in my country the fines for the above infractions are mild and the law is never applied. There's plenty of occasions where I am the only guy waiting at the pedestrian red light. I celebrate whenever I see someone who walks their dog and actually picks up the feces. I have seen policemen littering the sidewalks with empty cigarette packs.

Fine all those motherfuckers. Also fine me if I'm in the wrong, because I want to become more civilized than I am and I know I have bad habits too.

Some of those anti-mask laws also have an interesting component: an anti-hood law. That points to the clue that some of these laws were written to protect civil liberties and to deny the ability of KKK (Ku Klux Klan) members the ability to hide their identities while commiting their awful activities. States at which mentions hoods:
District of Columbia [slashdot.org]
Florida
Georgia
Louisiana
North Carolina
Virginia
West Virginia.
Note the geographic clustering of the anti-mask/anti-hood law states in the SouthEast United States of America: In some cases these laws originated as anti-KKK laws.